


do you recall when you were young? (you never used to worry 'bout the sun)

by motheyes



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Tragedy, she's a ghost. so, the major character death is mipha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:02:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25778605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/motheyes/pseuds/motheyes
Summary: Vah Ruta is home to quite a few ghosts.The Link that died a hundred years ago might just be one of them.
Kudos: 28





	do you recall when you were young? (you never used to worry 'bout the sun)

Distantly, the great big elephant cries out in pain and fear and mourning. Its call shakes Link down to his very core, leaves his eyes wet with tears he doesn’t remember crying.

Unlike the Zora king and his advisor, though, Link is not afraid.

Rather, he stares up at the dam that stretches far, far above the city, and he's swept up in Vah Ruta's wails.

He half-listens to the king as he explains the flooding and the dam overflowing and the catastrophe that it could spell. The other half of his mind is somewhere far away, not just on the other side of the dam, but also decades back in time.

Still, though, he processes enough of the king’s words to know that he only has more reason than ever to do what he set out here to accomplish.

Link promises to calm the beast.

The royal advisor doesn’t take his words too kindly, and Link supposes that’s fair. He did fail, after all; there's no reason to believe he won't do so again.

A thousand words and phrases swim through his head as Muzu storms off, _I'_ _ m sorry _ s and _I_ _ won’t let you down again _ s, but ultimately, the only thing that matters is the armored tunic that Link's told is his. He slips it on as he stands in front of Mipha’s statue, and is immediately overcome with a memory.

As he comes out of it, as his ears are still ringing, he barely catches the end of the conversation. His mouth is dry as he stutters out what he now remembers.

Before, he had someone else’s failures ascribed to his name. Now, he’s gained respect he didn’t earn. It's better than open derision, Link supposes.

He stamps down the urge to apologize, for not being who they think he is. The memory’s only shown him how stark that difference between the Link of a hundred years ago and the Link standing here right now is.

Instead of apologizing, instead of revealing himself as the fraud he is, he silently makes his way to Shatterback Point.

The lynel is the most terrifying thing Link remembers facing, and he sprints the rest of the way up to the point as quickly as he can, grabbing arrows here and there as he goes. He thinks he gets about twenty, but he loses count somewhere around the third time he narrowly dodges a shot.

He screeches to a halt at the very top of the mountain, using seconds he doesn’t have to scope out the long, long drop.

It’s too far down to really make out much of anything, but he can see the bright red glow of the giant mechanical elephant below him, can see the echoes of the light scattered across the still water of the reserve.

The lynel roars behind him and he forces himself to jump. The water, when he hits it, is shockingly cold, and it takes him a second to recover from the shock. Before too long, though, he makes his way over to the edge of the reserve, pulling himself out of the water and standing straight up to meet a certain Zora face to face.

Vah Ruta looms behind Sidon, half-submerged in the water. Link has to blink rain that could pass for tears out of his eyes as he looks up at it.

"Are you ready?" Sidon asks. Link chokes down on an emotion that he doesn't quite associate with himself anymore, that he's felt but not understood since he woke up, and he nods.

They circle the beast, Link on Sidon's back. link carefully shoots arrows at each of the motors on the elephant's back, his mind and heart as cold and numb as the ice that the beast sends flying at him.

It all passes in a blur, and before he knows it, Link's stepping into the beast's interior. For all the terror it's inflicted upon the Zora, Vah Ruta really is a thing of beauty. Layers of stone are carefully molded over each other, shaped not just for functionality, but also for aesthetic. The smooth, clean ground hums under Link’s feet, alive.

That’s when he hears Mipha’s voice for the first time in either a couple hours or a hundred years, depending on how he's counting.  She’s nothing but happy to see him. Link forces down his guilt and he does not say, _I'_ _ m sorry, I don’t know who you are. _

It takes some thought and planning to reach every terminal, but he manages it, and eventually, he’s instructed to go to the main control panel.

This _ is it _ , he thinks, hovering the Sheikah Slate over the smooth, dark surface.

He’s immediately proven wrong. A massive wave of malice exploding from the petal-shaped structure throws him halfway across the room. Disgustingly, the wave congeals into a solid form. Before Link can even get off the ground, a creature with a large head, bulbous body, and thin arms is staring down at him, hate in its single, blue eye.

The fight is fierce and dirty and the scariest thing Link’s had to do since he first had to face the existential horror of living in the current world. He scrapes by by the skin of his teeth, coming dangerously close to getting speared a few too many times for comfort.

Still, though, he ends up standing over the prone body of the blight, and something comes over him, and he feels his face twist into an angry sneer as he raises his sword and plunges it down into the thing’s head, fierce and quick and vicious.

The blight screeches and explodes into a puddle of black-red-grey malice that evaporates as quickly as it appeared.

Link pants, the shield and sword he’s wielding suddenly heavy in his grip. He takes a moment to collect himself. The armor he’s wearing (not really  _ his _ armor, is it?) weighs down on his shoulders.

Mipha’s voice rings in his head again. This time, though, he turns to see her ghostly-blue figure approaching him.

She smiles so softly when his eyes meet hers, and the gnawing in his gut reaches a crescendo.

Link doesn’t know what to say. He’s not the person she remembers, and she’s one of many people he can’t remember. He  _ can _ accept her thanks for freeing her, though. That alone was all him, even if the mistakes that trapped here there in the first place weren't entirely.

She fades back out after a soft goodbye. Link is left alone again.

He sheathes his sword, wipes blood off of a scrape on his face, and stumbles his way over to the terminal again. The tingling starts in his fingertips, the same as when he teleports to different shrines, and before he knows it, he’s back in Zora’s Domain.

The elephant perches itself atop a tall, distant cliff, facing directly towards the castle. There’s a tiny, barely-noticeable figure on its back, glowing bright blue.

Vah Ruta lets out one last wail. It pierces through Link’s ears and heart.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for making it all the way down here!! i've been replaying botw again and vah ruta handed me a single emotion before pointing a gun at me and telling me to write. title is from out in the rain by steam powered giraffe.
> 
> as such, this was basically all spat out over the course of a single fevered writing session a couple days ago. i figured, hey, why not post it, but it's by No Means my best work. i hope you enjoyed it anyway, though! thank you for reading. i hope you have a wonderful day. <3


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